*The Silesian Horseherd*
*(Das Pferdebürla)*
Questions of the Hour Answered By
*Friedrich Max Müller*
Translated From The German
By Oscar A. Fechter
With A Forward
By J. Estlin Carpenter, M.A.
Longmans, Green, and Co.
39 Paternoster Row, London
New York and Bombay
*1903*
CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Footnotes
PREFACE
The story of this volume is soon told. In July, 1895, Professor Max Müller
contributed to the _Deutsche Rundschau_ an essay on the lost treatise
against Christianity by the philosopher Celsus, known to us through the
reply of Origen of Alexandria. This essay, entitled “The ‘True History’(1)
of Celsus,” contained an exposition of the doctrine of the Logos and its
place in Christian teaching, with reference also to its applications in
our modern thought. Among the comments upon it which in due time found
their way to Oxford, was a vigorous, if familiar, letter (dated February,
1896) from a German emigrant to the United States, residing in
Pennsylvania, who signed himself by the unusual name of the _Pferdebürla_,
or “Horseherd.”(2) His criticisms served as a fair sample of others; and
his letter was published with a reply from Professor Max Müller in the
_Rundschau_ of November, 1896. More letters poured in upon the unwearied
scholar who had thus set aside precious time out of his last years to
answer his unknown correspondent. One of these, from “Ignotus Agnosticus,”
supplied a text for further comment, and the whole grew into a little
popular _apologia_, which was published at Berlin in 1899, and entitled
_Das Pferdebürla_, or “Questions of the Day answered by Friedrich Max
Müller.”
The veteran teacher thus enforced once more his ideas of the relation of
language and thought, in which he had long since recognised the clue to
man’s knowledge of the relation of his spirit to God. This inner union he
found realised in Christ, according to the testimony of the Fourth
Gospel;(3) and the lucid treatment of this great conception, freed from
the technicalities of theology, will possibly prove to some readers the
most helpful portion of this book. Ranging over many topics, once the
themes of vehement controversy, the discussion has often an intimate,
familiar, personal air. The disputants on opposite sides had drawn nearer;
they could better understand each other’s points of view.(4) These pages,
therefore, reveal the inmost beliefs of one who had devoted more than
fifty years to the study of the history of religious thought on the widest
scale, and had himself passed through severe struggles and deep griefs
with unshaken calm. No reader of Max Müller’s writings, or of the _Life
and Letters_, can fail to recognise in these trusts the secret unity of
all his labours. The record of human experience contained in the great
sacred literatures of the world, and verified afresh in manifold forms
from age to age, provided a basis for faith which no philosophy or science
could disturb.
This is the key to the reasonings and appeals of this little book. It was
translated as a labour of love by Mr. Fechter, Mayor of North Yakima, in
the United States. The translation has been revised on this side of the
Atlantic, and is now offered to the public in the belief that this final
testimony of a “voice that is still” to the reality of “things unseen”
will be welcome to many inquiring and perhaps troubled minds.
J. ESTLIN CARPENTER.
OXFORD, April 2, 1903.
CHAPTER I.
The True History Of Celsus
The following essays, which were intended primarily for the Horseherd, but
which were published in the _Deutsche Rundschau_, demand a short
explanatory introduction. This, I believe, can best be given by me, by
means of a reprint of another essay which appeared in the same periodical,
and was the direct cause for the letter, which the writer, under the name
of “Horseherd,” addressed to me. I receive many such anonymous
communications, but regret that it is only rarely possible for me to
answer them or to give them attention, much as I should like to do so. In
this particular case, the somewhat abrupt, but pure, human tone of the
letter appealed to me more than usual, and at my leisure I attempted an
answer. My article, which called forth the letter of the Horseherd, was
entitled “The ‘True History’ of Celsus,”(5) in the July number of the
_Deutsche Rundschau_, 1895, and, with a few corrections, is as follows:—
In an article which appeared in the March number of the _Deutsche
Rundschau_, 1895, entitled “The Parliament of Religions in Chicago,” I
expressed my surprise that this event which I had characterised as in my
opinion the most important of the year 1893, had been so little known and
discussed in Germany—so little, that the editors of the _Wiener
Fremdenblatt_ thought it needful to explain the nature of the Chicago
Congress. Likewise, when in answer to the question as to what I should
consider the most desirable discovery of the coming year in my department,
I answered the discovery of the _Sermo Verus_ of Celsus; this, too,
appeared to be a work so little known, that the editors considered it
necessary to add that Celsus was a renowned philosopher of the second
century, who first subjected the ever spreading system of Christianity to
a thorough criticism in a work entitled _Sermo Verus_. The wish, yes, even
the hope, that this lost book, of which we gain a fair idea from the reply
of Origen, should again make its appearance, was prompted by the recent
discoveries of ancient Greek papyrus manuscripts in Egypt. Where so many
unexpected discoveries have been made, we may hope for yet more. For who
would have believed that ancient Greek texts would be found in a
mummy-case, the Greek papyrus leaves being carelessly rolled together to
serve as cushions for the head and limbs of a skeleton? It was plain that
these papyrus leaves had been sold as waste paper, and that they were
probably obtained from the houses of Greek officials and military
officers, who had established themselves in Egypt during the Macedonian
occupation, and whose furniture and belongings had been publicly sold and
scattered on occasion of their rapid withdrawal. There were found not only
fragments of classical texts, as of Homer, Plato, and the previously
unknown treatise on “The Government of the Athenians,” not, perhaps,
composed, but utilised, by Aristotle, but also many fragments of Christian
literature, which made it probable that the libraries of Christian
families also had been thrown on the market, and that papyrus leaves, when
they appeared useless for any other purpose, were used as waste paper, or
as a kind of papier-maché.
But why should the “True History” of Celsus, the λόγος ἀληθής, or _Sermo
Verus_, excite our curiosity? The reason is quite plain. We know
practically nothing of the history of the teaching of Christ in the first,
second, and even third centuries, except what has been transmitted to us
by Christian writers. It is an old rule, however, that it is well to learn
from the enemy also,—“Fas est et ab hoste doccri.” Celsus was a resolute
foe of the new Christian teaching, and we should, at all events, learn
from his treatise how the Christian religion appeared in the eyes of a
cultivated man of the second century, who, it seems, concurred in many
important points with the philosophical conception cherished in the
Christian church, or at least was familiar with it, namely, the Logos
idea; but who could not comprehend how men, who had once understood and
assimilated a view of the world founded on the Logos, could combine with
it the belief in Christ as the incarnate Logos. To Celsus the Christian
religion is something objective; in all other works of the first three
centuries it is, and remains, almost entirely subjective.
This could hardly be otherwise, for a religion in its first inception
scarcely exists for the outer world. What at that time were Jerusalem and
Palestine in the eyes of the so-called world? A province yielding little
profit, and often in rebellion. The Jews and their religion had certainly
attracted the attention of Rome and Athens by their peculiarities; but the
Jewish sects interested the classical world much less than the sects of
the Platonic and Stoic schools. Christians were regarded as Jews, just as,
not many years ago, Jains were treated by us as Buddhists, Sikhs as
Brahmans, and Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, and Brahmans were promiscuously
placed in one pile as Indian idolaters. How should the differences which
distinguished the Christian from the Jew, and the Jewish Christian from
the heathen Christian, have been understood at that time in Rome? To us,
naturally, the step which Paul and his associates took appears an enormous
one—one of world-wide import; but of what interest could these things be
outside of Palestine? That the Jews who looked upon themselves as a
peculiar people, who would admit no strangers, and tolerate no marriages
between Jew and Gentile, who, in spite of all their disappointments and
defeats, energetically clung to their faith in a deliverer, in an earthly
Messiah, and in the coming glory of their nation; that they should
suddenly declare clean what they had always considered unclean; that they
should transform their national spirit into a universal sympathy; yes,
that they should recognise their Messiah in a crucified malefactor,
indicate a complete revolution in their history; but the race itself was
and continued to be, in the eyes of the world, if not beneath notice, at
least an object of contempt. It should not, therefore, surprise us that no
classical writer has given us a really historical account of the Christian
religion, or has even with one word referred to the wonderful events
which, had they actually taken place as described in the Gospels, would
have stirred the uttermost corners of the earth. Celsus is the only writer
of the second century who, being neither Christian nor Jew, was not only
acquainted with representatives of Christianity and Judaism, but had also,
it would seem, carefully read portions of the Old and New Testaments. He
even boasts of having a better knowledge of these religions than many of
their adherents (II, 12). That such a man considered this new Christian
sect of sufficient importance to subject it to a searching investigation,
is proof of his deep insight, and at the same time of the increasing power
of Christianity as a religion independent of Judaism. Who this Celsus
really was, it is not easy to discover. Even his adversary, Origen, seems
to know but little of him; at any rate he tells us nothing of him,—indeed,
we are even still in doubt about his date. It has been thought that he is
the Celsus to whom Lucian (120-200 A.D.) dedicated his work on the false
Alexander. This is possible; but Celsus is a very common name, and Origen
speaks of two men of this name who were both Epicureans and are supposed
to have lived in the times of Nero (54-68 A.D.) and Hadrian (118-138
A.D.). It has been argued that the latter could not have been the author
of the _Sermo Verus_, because it apparently mentions the sect of the
Marcellians, and this was not founded till the year 155 under Bishop
Anicetus. But Origen’s remark, that Celsus may have outlived the reign of
Hadrian, has been overlooked. At any rate Origen speaks of the _Sermo
Verus_ as a work long known, and as he did not die until the year 253
A.D., in his time the work of Celsus would have been recognised as of
considerable age, even if written after the year 155. Much learning has
been expended on the identification of Celsus, which seems to me to have
been wasted. It is remarkable that Origen made no effort to become
personally acquainted with his adversary. He leaves the question open
whether he is the same Celsus who composed two other books against the
Christians (_Contra Celsum_, IV, 36). At the end of his book he speaks of
him as if he had been a contemporary, and asserts that a second book by
him against the Christians, which has either not yet been completed or has
not yet reached him, shall be as completely refuted as the _Sermo Verus_.
Such language is only used of a contemporary. Could it be proved that
Celsus was a friend of Lucian, then we should know that in the judgment of
the latter he was a noble, truth-loving, and cultivated man. It was not
Origen’s interest to emphasise these aspects of his opponent’s character;
but it must be said to his credit, that though he was much incensed at
some of the charges of Celsus, he never attacked his personal character.
Perhaps it was not fair in Origen to accuse Celsus of being ashamed of his
Epicureanism, and of concealing his own philosophical and atheistic
convictions, in order to obtain an easier hearing among Jews and
Christians.(6) This does not appear quite fair, for it was a very
pardonable device for Celsus first to attack a part of Christian teaching
under the mask of a Jew, who represents his faith as the older and more
respectable, and seeks to convince the Christians that they would have
done better had they remained true to the religion of their fathers. On
the contrary, as Celsus, whatever he may have been except a Jew, could not
with a good conscience have undertaken an actual defence of Judaism, it
was quite natural that he should choose a Jew as an advocate of the Jewish
religion, and put into his mouth, like a second Philo, ideas which at all
events sound more Platonic than Epicurean. Origen was entirely justified
in showing that in this process Celsus frequently forgot his part; and
this he did with much skill.
But whatever Celsus may have been,—an Epicurean, or, as has occasionally
been maintained, a Neo-platonist,—he was at all events no mean adversary
and certainly not unworthy of Origen’s steel. If not, why should Origen
have felt the need of such an earnest refutation? He says, certainly, that
he did it only at the request of his old friend and protector, Ambrosius.
But that is what many writers under similar circumstances have said and
still say. We have, at all events, lost much through the loss (or
destruction?) of all manuscripts of Celsus. Not only was he acquainted
with the principal philosophical schools of antiquity, he appears also to
have studied zealously the religions of the ancient world as they were
known at that time to the learned, especially in Alexandria, of which we
have but scant knowledge. Origen expressly states (I, 14) that Celsus
described the various peoples who possessed religious and philosophical
systems, because he supposed that all these views bore a certain
relationship to one another. Without a doubt much has been here lost to
us, not only for the history of Greek philosophy, but also for the history
of Oriental religions and philosophies, whose representatives at that time
sojourned in Alexandria, yet as to whose personal influence we are almost
entirely in the dark. Celsus is presumed to have written of the doctrines
of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Jews, Persians, Odrysians,
Samothracians, Eleusinians, even of the Samaneans, _i.e._ the Buddhists
(I, 24), and to have represented these as better accredited than those of
the Jews. We see anew what treasures were stored up in Alexandria, and we
feel all the more deeply their irrevocable loss. The desire and the hope
of recovering the work of Celsus were therefore quite natural for any who
wished to penetrate more deeply into the spiritual atmosphere of the
second and third centuries, and especially for such as strove to
understand clearly how men of this age, versed in philosophy, such as
Clement and Origen himself, could confess Christianity, or become
converted to it, or could defend it against other philosophers without in
the least becoming untrue to their philosophical convictions. That the
lower classes among Jews and Greeks followed the new teaching, is much
more intelligible, even without wishing to lay too much stress on the
evidential value of the miracles at that time. The great majority were
accustomed to miracles; what was almost entirely lacking was practical
religion. The Greek thinkers had created systems of philosophy and morals,
but the traditional worship had degenerated into a mere spectacle. Even
among the Jews the old religion had become a rigid temple ritual, which
offered but little comfort and hope to the weak heart of man. In the eyes
of the majority of the philosophers of the age every religion was only
pernicious superstition, good enough for the masses, but scarcely worth
consideration by the cultured. That Celsus made the Christian religion the
object of serious treatment and refutation, not only implies a subtle and
unprejudiced view of his age, but shows us at the same time how the
Christianity of that period, entirely independent of the Jewish religion,
had gained in significance, and had even in the eyes of a heathen
philosopher begun to be esteemed as something important, as something
dangerous, as something that had to be combated with philosophical
weapons.
Christianity is especially indebted for its rapid spread to its practical
side, to the energy of its love, which was bestowed on all who were weary
and heavy laden. Christ and the apostles had understood how to gather
around them the poor, the sinners, the most despised members of human
society. They were offered forgiveness of their sins, love, and sympathy,
if they merely promised to amend and sin no more. Among these earliest
followers of Christ there was scarcely a change of religion in our sense
of the word. Christianity was at first much more a new life than a new
religion. The first disciples were and remained Jews in the eyes of the
world, and that they came from the most despised classes even Origen does
not dispute. Celsus had reproached the Christians because the apostles,
around whose heads even in his time a halo had begun to shine, had been
men of bad character, criminals, fishermen, and tax-gatherers. Origen
admits that Matthew was a tax-gatherer, James and John fishermen, probably
Peter and Andrew as well; but declares that it was not known how the other
apostles gained a livelihood. Even that they had been malefactors and
criminals, Origen does not absolutely deny. He refers to the letter of
Barnabas, in which it is stated “that Jesus chose men as his apostles who
were guilty of sin more than all other evil doers.”(7) He relies upon the
words of Peter, when he says, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O
Lord.”(8)
Paul, in like manner, says in his epistle to Timothy,(9) “This is a
faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”
But it is just in this that Origen recognises the divine power of the
personality and the teaching of Christ, that by means of it men who had
been deeply sunken in sins could be raised to a new life; and he declares
it to be unjust that those who repented of their early sins, and had
entered into a pure life, well pleasing to God, should be reproached with
their previous sinfulness. In this respect he makes, indeed, no
distinction between the apostles and such men as Phædon and Polemo, who
were rescued from the mire of their sins through philosophy; and he
recognises in the teaching of Christ a still greater force, because it had
proved its saving and sanctifying power without any of the arts of
learning and eloquence. What the apostles were, and what they became
through the influence of the Gospel, Origen himself explains in the words
of Paul, “For we also were aforetime foolish, disobedient, deceived,
serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, and hating
one another.”(10)
He attributes it as an honour to the apostles that, even if their
self-accusations were extravagant, they had so openly acknowledged their
sins, in order to place the saving influence of the Gospel in a clearer
light. But the fact itself, that the apostles had been sinful and despised
men, Origen honestly admits. We also know with what true humanity Christ
himself treated the adulteress: how he challenged the Pharisees, if they
themselves were free from sin, to cast the first stone at her. And who
does not admire the aged Pharisees who silently withdrew, one after the
other, from the oldest to the youngest, without casting a stone? Have we
many such Pharisees in our time? Jesus, however, dismissed the adulteress
with the compassionate words, “Sin no more.” That such a course toward
sin-laden mankind by one who knew no sin, made a deep impression on the
masses, is perfectly intelligible. We see a remarkable parallel in the
first appearance of Buddha and his disciples in India. He, too, was
reproached for inviting sinners and outcasts to him, and extending to them
sympathy and aid. He, too, was called a physician, a healer of the sick;
and we know what countless numbers of ailing mankind found health through
him. All this can be quite understood from a human standpoint. A religion
is, in its nature, not a philosophy; and no one could find fault with
Christianity if it had devoted itself only to the healing of all human
infirmities, and had set aside all metaphysical questions. We know how
Buddha also personally declined all philosophical discussion. When one of
his disciples put questions to him about metaphysical problems, the
solution of which went beyond the limits of human reason, he contended
that he wished to be nothing more than a physician, to heal the
infirmities of mankind. Accordingly, he says to Mâlunkyaputta: “What have
I said to you before? Did I say, ‘Come to me and be my disciple, that I
may teach you whether the world is eternal or not; whether the world is
finite or infinite; whether the life-principle is identical with the body
or not, whether the perfect man lives after death or not?’ ”
Mâlunkyaputta answered, “Master, you did not say that.”
Then Buddha continued, “Did you then say, ‘I will be your disciple,’ but
first answer these questions?”
“No,” said the disciple.
Thereupon Buddha said: “A man was once wounded by a poisoned arrow, and
his friends called in an experienced physician. What if the wounded man
had said, I shall not permit my wound to be examined until I know who
wounded me, whether he be a nobleman, a Brahman, a Vaisya, or a Sûdra;
what his name is; to what family he belongs; if he be large or small, or
of medium size, and how the weapon with which he wounded me looked. How
would it fare with such a man? Would he not certainly succumb to his
wound?”
The disciple then perceives that he came to Buddha as a sick man, desiring
to be healed by him as a physician, not to be instructed about matters
that lie far beyond the human horizon.
Buddha has often been censured because he claimed for his religion such an
exclusively practical character, and instead of philosophy preached only
morality. These censures began in early times; we find them in the famous
dialogues between Nagasena and Milinda, the king Menander, about 100 B.C.
And yet we know how, in spite of all warnings given by the founder of
Buddhism, this religion was soon entirely overgrown with metaphysics; and
how, finally, metaphysics as Abbidharma found an acknowledged place in the
Sacred Canon of the Buddhists.
Christianity presents a parallel case. In the beginning it sought only to
call sinners to repentance. The strong, as Jesus himself said, do not
require a physician, but the sick. He therefore looked upon himself as a
physician, just as Buddha had done in an earlier day. He declared that he
was not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. The truth of his
teaching should be known by its fruits, and there is scarcely a trace in
the Gospels of philosophical discussions, or even of attacks on the
schools of Greek philosophy. But even here it was soon apparent that, for
a practical reformation of conduct, a higher consecration is essential. It
was admitted, as an Indian philosopher is reputed long since to have said
to Socrates, that no one could understand the human element who had not
first understood the divine. Men of Greek culture who felt themselves
attracted by the moral principles of the little Christian congregations
soon, however, wanted more. They had to defend the step which they had
taken, and the Christianity which they wished to profess, or had
professed, against their former friends and co-believers, and this soon
produced the so-called apologies for Christianity, and expositions of the
philosophical and theological views which constituted the foundation of
the new teaching. A religion which was recruited only from poor sinners
and tax-gatherers could scarcely have found entry into the higher circles
of society, or maintained itself in lecture-rooms and palaces against the
cultivated members of refined circles, if its defenders, like Buddha, had
simply ignored all philosophical, especially all metaphysical, questions.
How came it, then, that cultured men in high stations, entirely
independent, professed Christianity? How did they make their friends and
former co-believers understand that such a step was _bona fide_? In
answering this question, we get help from Celsus, as well as his opponent,
Origen.
The bridge which led across from Greek philosophy to Christianity was the
Logos. It is remarkable how much this fundamental doctrine of Christianity
fell, later on, into the background; how little it is understood, even by
the educated of our own time, and how often, without giving it any
consideration, they have cast it aside. In early Christian days this was
probably a consequence of the practical and political development of the
new religion. But the living nerve of the Christian religion, which was
its closest bond to the highest spiritual acquisitions of the ancient
Greek world, was thus severed. First, the Logos, the Word, the Son of God,
was misunderstood, and mythology was employed to make the dogma, thus
misconceived, intelligible. In modern times, through continued neglect of
the Logos doctrine, the strongest support of Christianity has been cut
from under its feet, and at the same time its historical justification,
its living connection with Greek antiquity, has almost entirely passed out
of view. In Germany it almost appears as though Goethe, by his _Faust_, is
answerable for the widespread treatment of the Logos idea as something
obscure, incomprehensible, mystical. Many, when reading the opening of the
Fourth Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word,” say to themselves, “No one
understands that,” and read on. He who does not earnestly and honestly
make an effort to understand this beginning of the Gospel, shows that he
is but little concerned with the innermost essence of Christianity, as
clearly presented to us in the Fourth Gospel. He forgets that not only
faith, but thought, pertains to a religion. It is no excuse to say, “Did
not the learned Dr. Faust torment himself to discover what ‘the word’ here
meant, and did not find it out?” He says in Goethe:—
“’Tis writ: ‘In the beginning was the Word’!
I pause perplexed! Who now will help afford?
I cannot the mere Word so highly prize,
I must translate it otherwise.”
But this is just what he ought not do. It was not necessary to translate
it at all; he only needed to accept the Logos as a technical expression of
Greek philosophy. He would then have seen that it is impossible to prize
the Word too highly, if we first learn what the Word meant in the idiom of
contemporary philosophy. Not even to a Faust should Goethe have imputed
such ignorance as when he continues to speculate without any historical
knowledge:—
“If by the spirit guided as I read,
“In the beginning was the Sense,” Take heed.
The import of this primal sentence weigh,
Lest thy too hasty pen be led astray.
Is force creative then of sense the dower?
“In the beginning was the Power.”
Thus should it stand; yet, while the line I trace,
A something warns me once more to efface.
The spirit aids, from anxious scruples freed,
I write: ‘In the beginning was the Deed.’ ”(11)
Had Goethe wished to scourge the unhistorical exegesis of modern
theologians, he could not have done so better than by this attempt of an
interpreter of the Bible, fancying himself illumined by the spirit, but
utterly destitute of all knowledge of history. Knowledge of the history of
the Greek philosophy of the first and second centuries after Christ is
indispensable to the understanding of such a word as Logos—a word that
grew up on Greek soil, and whose first roots reach far into the distant
past of the Greek mind; and for that very reason not admitting of
translation, either into Hebrew or into German. Like many other _termini
technici_, it must be understood historically; just as logic, metaphysic,
analytic, organon, etc., can only be apprehended and understood
historically. Now it is, perhaps, not to be denied, that even now a
majority of educated readers either perfunctorily repeat the first
sentence of the Fourth Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word,” or believe
that something lies buried therein that is beyond the depth of ordinary
men. This, of course, is partially true, and it cannot be otherwise in
religions which are intended not only for the young, but for the wise and
learned, and which should be strong meat for adults, and not merely milk
for babes. The fault lies chiefly in the translation, in that it should
have been thought necessary to translate a word instead of permitting it
to remain, what it was, a foreign word.
This becomes still worse when, as for instance, in certain Oriental
languages, the newly converted Christian has to read, “In the beginning
was the Noun or the Verb.” The correct translation would, of course, be,
“In the beginning was the Logos.” For Logos is not here the usual word
Logos, but a _terminus technicus_, that can no more be translated out of
the lexicon than one would think of etymologically translating Messiah or
Christ as the “Anointed,” or Angelos as “messenger” or “nuncio.” If we
read at the beginning of the Gospel, “In the beginning was the Logos,” at
least every one would know that he has to deal with a foreign, a Greek
word, and that he must gain an understanding of it out of Greek
philosophy, just as with such words as _atom_, _idea_, _cosmos_, etc. It
is remarkable what human reason will consent to. Millions of Christians
hear and read, “In the beginning was the Word,” and either give it no
thought, or imagine the most inconceivable things, and then read on, after
they have simply thrown away the key to the Fourth Gospel. That thought
and reflection also are a divine service is only too readily forgotten.
Repeated reading and reflection are necessary to make the first verse of
the Fourth Gospel accessible and intelligible in a general way; but one
cannot be a true Christian without thinking and reflecting.
An explanation of Logos in Greek philosophy is much simpler than is
commonly supposed. It is only needful not to forget that for the Greeks
thought and word were inseparable, and that the same term, namely, Logos,
expressed both, though they distinguished the inner from the outer Logos.
It is one of the most remarkable aberrations of the human mind, to imagine
that there could be a word without thought or a thought without word. The
two are inseparable: one cannot exist or be even conceived without the
other. I believe that I have clearly shown in my _Science of Thought_ that
thought without word and word without thought are impossible and
inconceivable, and why it is so. Here is the first key to a historical
solution of the riddle at the beginning of the Fourth Gospel. We know that
Greek philosophy after making every possible effort to explain the world
mechanically, had already in the school of Anaxagoras reached the view
that the hylozoic as well as the atomic theory leaves the human mind
unsatisfied; and that it is necessary to posit as the origin of all things
a thought or thinking mind that manifests itself in the universe. This was
the _nous_, the mind, of Anaxagoras. He could just as well have called it
_Logos_, for the word was in use even before the time of Anaxagoras, to
express that reason, the recognition of whose all-pervading presence in
the universe was the great step in advance made by the system of
Anaxagoras. Even Heraclitus had divined the existence of reason in the
universe, and had applied to it the name Logos. While the masses
recognised in _Moira_ or _Heimarmenê_ only destiny, or fate, Heraclitus
declared, that the essence of this Heimarmenê is the _Logos_, the Reason
that pervades the world. This is the oldest expression of Hegel’s thought,
“What is, is rational.” We must not suppose, however, that Heraclitus
considered this Logos as identical with his fire. He merely says that the
fire is subordinate to the Logos, that it operates κατὰ τὸν λόγον,
according to the Logos, or (as we should say) rationally.
Our knowledge of the entire system of Heraclitus is of course so
fragmentary that we can only speak of this, as of many other points, with
great caution. The same is true, although in a lesser degree, of the
system of Anaxagoras. His _nous_, if we translate it by mind, is more
comprehensive than _Logos_. We must not, however, suppose, that this
_nous_ bore a personal character, for Anaxagoras expressly states that it
is a χρῆμα, a thing, even though he would have said that this _nous_
regulated all things. Whether an impersonal mind is conceivable, was still
at that time a remote problem. Even in Plato we cannot clearly determine
whether he represented his _nous_ as God in our sense, or as _Sophia_,
wisdom, a word which with him often replaces _nous_. It is remarkable that
in his genuine works Plato does not generally use the word _Logos_, and in
Aristotle as well _nous_ remains the first term, what we should call the
divine mind, while _Logos_ is the reason, the causal nexus, the οῦ ἔνεκα,
therefore decidedly something impersonal, if not unsubjective.
Plato is the first who distinguishes between essence and being in the
primeval cause, or, as we might say, between rest and activity. He speaks
of an eternal plan of the world, a thought of the world, the world as a
product of thought, inseparable from the creator, but still
distinguishable from him. This is the Platonic world of “Ideas,” which
lies at the foundation of the world perceivable by the senses, the
phenomenal world. What is more natural or more reasonable than this
thought? If the world has an author, what can we imagine as reasonable
men, but that the thought, the plan of the world, belongs to the author,
that it was thought, and thereby realised for the first time? Now this
plan, this idea, was the inner _Logos_, and as every thought finds its
immediate expression in a word, so did this one, which was then called the
outer Logos. The outer was not possible without the inner, even as a word
is impossible without mind and reason. But the inner Logos also first
realises itself in the outer, just as the reasonable thought can only be
made real in the word. This character of the Logos as thought and word, at
once capable of distinction and yet undifferentiated and inseparable, is
of the highest importance for Christian speculation; without an exact
comprehension of it, we shall see that the relation of the Son to the
Father as we find it explained by Clement and other fathers of the church,
remains dark and misty. We have no concept without a word, and philology
has shown us how every word, even the most concrete, is based on a
concept. We cannot think of “tree” without the word or a hieroglyphic of
some kind. We can even say that, as far as we are concerned, there is no
tree, except in language, for in the nature of things there are only oaks
or beeches, but not and never a tree. And what is true of tree is true of
all words, or to speak with Plato, of all ideas, or to speak with the
Stoics, of all _Logoi_. There are no doubt conjurers who pretend to be
able to think without words, and even take no little pride in being able
to perform this trick. They forget only too often that their inexpressible
thoughts are nothing but obscure feelings, in fact, they do not even
distinguish between presentation and idea, and forget that when we speak
of words, we do not understand by them mere mimicry of sound or
interjections, but only and exclusively intelligible words, that is, such
as are based on concepts and are derived from roots. The old Greek
philosophers, probably favoured by their language, appear never to have
forgotten the true relation between Logos and Logos, and their thought
finally resulted in a view of the world founded upon it. Although it is
now the custom to speak slightingly of the later Platonists, we should
always recognise that we owe to them the preservation of this, the most
precious jewel out of the rich storehouse of Greek philosophy, that the
world is the expression and realisation of divine thought, that it is the
divine word expressed.
We cannot here enter into the various phases in which Plato and his
followers presented these ideas. At times they are represented as
independent of the Creator, as models, as golden statues, to which the
creative mind looks up. Soon, however, they are conceived as thoughts of
this mind, as something secondary, created, sometimes also as something
independent, as much so as is the Son in relation to his Father. The whole
Logos, with all ideas, became in this manner the first-born Son of the
Creator, yet so that the Father could not be Father without the Son, or
the Son without the Father, Son. All these distinctions, insignificant as
they may appear from a purely philosophical point of view, demand
attention because of the influence that they afterward exerted on
Christian dogma, especially on that of the Trinity—a dogma which, however
specifically Christian it may appear to be, must still in all its
essential features be traced back to Greek elements.
It is certainly remarkable that Jewish philosophy also developed on very
similar lines, of course not with the purity and exactness of the Greek
mind, but still with the same object in view,—to bring the reason and
wisdom recognised in nature into renewed connexion with their supernatural
Jehovah. Through the Proverbs of Solomon and similar works the Jews were
well acquainted with Wisdom, who says of herself (viii. 22 ff.): “The Lord
possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was
set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.…
Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth.…
When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the
face of the depth.… Then I was by him, as a master workman: and I was
daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.” These and similar
thoughts were familiar to Jewish thinkers (see Proverbs viii. and ix., Job
xxviii. 12, Ecclesiasticus i. 4), and it was natural that, in coming in
contact with Greek philosophy, especially in Alexandria, they should seek
to recognise again this traditional conception of divine Wisdom in the
Logos of Greek philosophers. We see this most clearly in Philo, a
contemporary of Christ, of whom it is often difficult to say whether he
reasons more as a Greek or as a Jew. While the Greeks had almost lost
sight of the bridge between the world and God by abstraction, the Jews,
through mistaken reverence, had so far removed the Creator above his
creation that on both sides the need of mediation or a mediator was deeply
felt. The Jewish God was little better than the Epicurean. If the
Epicureans taught that there probably is a God, but that the world is of
no concern to Him, so among the Jews of the first century gnostic ideas
prevailed, according to which not the highest but a subordinate God
created and ruled the world. The task of creation seemed unworthy of the
supreme God. Philo therefore seized the Stoic idea of the Logos or Logoi
in order to bring his transcendental God again into relation with the
visible world. The most important attributes and powers of God were
hypostatised as beings who participated in the creation and government of
the world. Philo’s God first of all creates or possesses within himself a
world that is conceived, an invisible world,(12) which is also called the
world of ideas(13) or the idea of ideas.(14) These ideas are the types(15)
of all things, and the power by which God created them is often called
_Sophia_ or _Epistêmê_, wisdom or knowledge.(16) This world of ideas in
its entirety corresponds, as is readily seen, to the Greek Logos, the
separate types to the Platonic ideas or the Stoic Logoi.
The entire Logos, or the sum of Ideas, is called by Philo, entirely
independent of Christianity, the true Son of God, while the realised world
of Christian teaching passes as the second Son. If the first Logos is
occasionally called the image or shadow of God, the world of sense is the
image of the image, the shadow of the shadow. More logically expressed,
God would be the _causa efficiens_, matter the _causa materialis_, the
Logos the _causa instrumentalis_, while the goodness of God is sometimes
added as the _causa finalis_. At the same time we also see here the
difference between the working of the Jewish and Greek minds. In the Old
Testament and in Philo, the Sophia or wisdom of God becomes a half
mythological being, a goddess who is called the mother, and even the
nurse,(17) of all beings. She bore with much labour out of the seed of
God,(18) as Philo says, the only and beloved visible Son, that is to say,
this Cosmos. This Cosmos is called by him the Son of God,(19) the only
begotten,(20) while the first Logos is the first-born,(21) and as such
often coincides with the Sophia and its activity.(22) He is also called
the elder son,(23) and as such is distinguished from a younger son,(24)
from the real, visible world. But this divine Sophia may not, according to
Philo, any more than God Himself, come into direct contact with impure
matter. According to him this contact occurs through the instrumentality
of certain powers,(25) which in part correspond to the Greek Logoi, and
which in his poetic language are also represented as angels.(26) Philo
says in plain terms that the eternal Logoi, that is the Platonic ideas,
are commonly called angels.
We see by this in how misty an atmosphere Philo lived and wrote, and we
may be certain that he was not the only one who in this manner blended the
Jewish religion with Greek philosophy. In the Samaritan theology also, in
Onkelos and Jonathan, traces of the Logos idea are to be found.(27) If we
now observe in the Fourth Gospel, somewhere in the first half of the
second century, this same amalgamation of Christian doctrine with Platonic
philosophy, only in a much clearer manner, we can scarcely doubt from what
source the ideas of the Logos as the only begotten Son of God, and of the
divine wisdom, originally flowed. Christian theologians are more inclined
to find the first germs of these Christian dogmas in the Old Testament,
and it is not to be denied that in the minds of the authors of some of the
books of the Old Testament analogous ideas struggle for expression. But
they are always tinctured with mythology, and among the prophets and
philosophers of the Old Testament there is absolutely no trace of a truly
philosophical conception of the Logos, such as confronts us as a result of
centuries of thought among the Platonists and Neo-Platonists, the Stoics
and Neo-Stoics. We look in vain in Palestine for a word like Logos, for a
conception of the Cosmos as the expression of a rationally thinking mind,
especially for the Logoi as the species of the Logos, as the primeval
thoughts and types of the universe. It is difficult to understand why
theologians should have so strenuously endeavoured to seek the germs of
the Logos doctrine among the Jews rather than the Greeks, as if it was of
any moment on which soil the truth had grown, and as if for purely
speculative truths, the Greek soil had not been ploughed far deeper and
cultivated more thoroughly than the Jewish. That Philo found employment
for Platonic ideas, and especially for the Stoic Logos, nay, even for the
Logoi, in his own house, and that other philosophers went so far as to
declare the fundamental truths of Greek philosophy to have been borrowed
from the Old Testament, is well known; but modern researches have rendered
such ideas impossible. The correspondences to the Greek Logos that are
found in the Old Testament are of great interest, in so far as they make
the later amalgamation of Semitic and Aryan ideas historically more
intelligible, and also in so far as—like the correspondences to be found
among the East Indians and even the red Indians(28)—they confirm the truth
or at least the innate human character of a Logos doctrine. But wherever
we encounter the word Logos outside of Greece, it is, and remains, a
foreign word, a Hellenic thought.
Jewish philosophers, while they adopted the word, only filled their old
skins with new wine, with the natural consequence that the wine burst the
old skins; but without spilling. For it was this which, in the hands of
such men as the writer of the Fourth Gospel, as Hippolytus, Clement,
Origen, and the best of the church fathers, gave them the strength and
enthusiasm to triumph over the world, and especially over the strongholds
of heathen religion, and even over Greek philosophy. Had the Fourth
Evangelist wished to say that Christ was the divine Sophia or the
Shekinah, or, as in Job, Wisdom as the fear of God, would he have said,
“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos became flesh, and lived
among us, and we saw his glory, a glory as of the only begotten Son of the
Father, full of grace and truth?” Why not take the facts just as they are,
and why wish to improve that which requires no human improvement? The
Christian doctrine is and remains what it is; it rests on an
indestructible arch, supported on one side by the Old Testament and on the
other by Greek philosophy, each as indispensable as the other. We forget
only too readily how much Christianity, in its victory over Greek
philosophy, owes to this very philosophy. Christianity could no doubt have
achieved the moral and social regeneration of the people without these
weapons of the Greek mind; but a religion, especially in the age of the
downfall of Greek and Roman philosophy, must have been armed for battle
with the best, the most cultured, and the most learned classes of society,
and such a battle demanded a knowledge of the weapons which had been
forged in the schools of Greek philosophy. We cannot therefore put too
high a value on the Fourth Gospel for a knowledge of the intellectual
movement of that day. It is true that a religion need not be a philosophy,
but it must not owe philosophy any answer. Small as may be the emphasis
that we now lay on the Logos doctrine, in that period it was the centre,
the vital germ of the whole Christian teaching. If we read any of the
writings of Athanasius, or of any of the older church fathers, we shall be
surprised to see how all of them begin with the Word (Logos) as a fixed
point of departure, and then proceed to prove that the Word is the Son of
God, and finally that the Son of God is Jesus of Nazareth. Religious and
philosophical are here closely related. If the Christian philosophers gain
on the one hand the divinity of the Son of God, on the other hand they
retain the rationality of the created universe. That “the ALL is Logos, is
Word or Reason,” was at that time as much the battle cry of the prevailing
philosophy as the contrary has now become the battle cry of the
Darwinians, who seek to explain species, kinds, _i.e._ the Logoi, the
divine ideas, as the products not of the originating Mind, but of natural
selection, of environment or circumstance, of the survival of the fittest.
And what is the fittest, if not the rational, the Platonic “Good,” that
is, the Logos? Why, then, turn back to the stone age of human thinking,
why again turn nature into wood, when for thousands of years Greek
philosophers and Christian thinkers have recognised her as something
spiritual, as a world of eternal ideas? How would such men as Herder,
Schelling, and Hegel have smiled at such a view of the world! Yes, Darwin
himself would be ashamed of his followers, for he saw, though not always
clearly, that everything in this sphere presupposes something beyond, and
in the loftiest utterance of his book he demanded an origin, yes, an
originator. In the writings of the philosophical church fathers we
constantly hear more of the Logos which was in the beginning, and through
which all things were made, than of God, who in the beginning created
heaven and earth.
And in this lies the great interest of the lost treatise of Celsus. Had he
been an Epicurean, as Origen supposed, he would have had no personal
interest in the Logos. But this Logos had become at that time to such an
extent the common property of Greek philosophy, that the Jew, under whose
mask Celsus at the outset attacked the Christians, could quite naturally
express his willingness to acknowledge the Logos as the Son of God.
Origen, it is true, says that the Jew has here forgotten his part, for he
had himself known many Jewish scholars, no one of whom would have
acknowledged such an idea. This shows that Origen did not know the works
of Philo, who would certainly have offered no objection to such a
doctrine, for he himself calls the Logos the first-born Son (υἱὸς
πρωτόονος)(29) When therefore Celsus, the heathen philosopher, admits
through the mouth of the Jew that the Logos is the Son of God, he is
merely on his guard against the identification of any individual with the
Son of God and indirectly with the Logos, that is to say, he does not wish
to be a Christian. At all events we see how general was the view at that
time, that the whole creation was the realisation of the Logos, nay, of
the Son of God; that God uttered Himself, revealed Himself, in the world;
that each natural species is a Word, a Thought of God, and that finally
the idea of the entire world is born of God, and is thereby the Son of
God.
This idea of a Son of God, although in its philosophical sense decidedly
Greek, had, it is true, certain preparatory parallels among the Jews, on
which Christian theologians have laid only too great stress. In the fifth
book of Moses we read, “You are children of the Lord your God.” In the
book of Enoch, chap. cv., the Messiah is also called the Son of God, and
when the tempter says to Christ, Matthew iv. 1, “If thou be the Son of
God,” it means the same as “If thou be the Messiah.”
The question is: Is this Jewish conception of the Son of God as Messiah
the Christian as well? Such it has been, at least in one book of the
Christian church, in the Fourth Gospel, and it found its expression first
in the representation that Joseph was descended from David; secondly, in
the belief that Jesus had no earthly father. We see here at once the first
clear contradiction between Christian philosophy and Christian mythology.
If Joseph were not the father of Jesus, how could Joseph’s descent from
David prove the royal ancestry of Jesus? And how does it follow from his
being the Son of God that he had no earthly father? Although he was the
Son of God, he was called the son of the carpenter, and his brothers and
sisters were well known. The divine birth demands the human; without it,
it is entirely unintelligible. We know from the recently discovered
ancient Syrian translation of the Gospels that the two streams of
thought—that Christ was the Son of God, and that at the same time he had
an earthly father,—could flow side by side, quite undisturbed, without the
one rendering the other turbid.
It was the misunderstanding of the spiritual birth of Christ from his
divine Father, and even from his divine mother (the Ruach, feminine, the
holy spirit), that appeared to make it necessary to deny him an earthly
father, and to assert that even his human mother did not conceive and give
birth to him in the ordinary way. In the earliest period of the Christian
church this was otherwise. It was considered at that time that in Christ
the divine sonship went hand in hand with the human, and further that the
one without the other would lose its true meaning. In a Syrian palimpsest,
which was recently discovered in the convent at Mount Sinai by Mrs. Smith
Lewis, and which, being written in the fifth century, presupposes a still
older Syrian translator, we now see an original Greek text, probably of
the second century, in which the Davidic genealogy of Joseph (Matthew i.
16) is really the genealogy of Jesus, for it is there said, “Jacob begat
Joseph; Joseph to whom the virgin Mary was espoused begat Jesus, who is
called Christ.” In the twenty-first verse it reads also, “And she shall
bear him a son,” and in the twenty-fifth verse, “And took unto him his
wife, and she bare him a son, and he called his name Jesus.” This purely
human birth of Jesus does not in any manner disturb the belief in his true
divine origin, as the Son of God, as the first-born, the image of God,
whose name was called the Word of God, _i.e._ Logos. On the contrary, it
removes all difficulties with which so many Christians have contended,
openly or in silence, when they asked themselves how it is possible to
conceive a human birth, a human mother, without a human father. Even a
deification of the mother, or even of the grandmother, such as is
proclaimed by the Roman church, does not help any honest soul out of this
mire which has been made by well-meaning but ignorant theologians. The old
Christian philosophers, the old church fathers, saints, and martyrs, alone
give us light and leading. As long as we conceive the divine sonship of
Christ from the Jewish or Greek mythological standpoint, the true divine
nature of Christ remains a mere phrase. When, however, we call to our aid
the most orthodox and enlightened men of the second century, we find that
such men as Justin, Tatian, Theophilus, Athenagoras, Apollonius(30) and
Clement, to say nothing of Origen, believed in Jesus as the only begotten
son of God(31) in the sense which these words had at that time for every
one who spoke and thought in Greek. This Son is often represented as
distinguishable from the Father, but not as separable. Of a Son of God in
the Jewish sense of the word, of a descendant of David, the evangelist
would never have said that all things were made by him. That could be
affirmed only of the true Son of God, of the Logos, as the thought of God,
which is uttered in the visible world.
In what sense this Logos was recognised in Jesus, is certainly a difficult
question, and here the work of Celsus would have been of great use to us,
for he expressly states that he has no objection to the Logos idea; but
how philosophers could accept an incarnation(32) of this Logos in Jesus,
was beyond his understanding. It must be borne in mind that matter and
flesh were held by Celsus to be something so unclean, that according to
him the Deity could only operate on matter by means of an endless number
of intermediaries (a true _fœtus œonum_). This obscurity in the conception
of Jesus as Logos by the Christian church is the reason why Celsus does
not regard Joseph as the natural father of Jesus, but Panthera. Origen, of
course, denounces this very indignantly; and the legend is nothing more
than one of the many calumnies, which are nearly always to be traced among
the opponents of a new religion and its founders. For the true nature and
the divine birth of Christ, as Origen himself seems to feel, such a story
would naturally have no significance whatever. It remains true, however,
that no writer of authority of the second and third centuries has clearly
explained in what sense the Christian church conceived Jesus as the Logos.
Three conceptions are possible. The first appears to have been that of the
Fourth Gospel, that the Logos, in all its fulness, as the Son, who in the
beginning was with God and was God, by whom all things were made, became
flesh in Jesus, and that this Jesus gave to those who believed in him as
Logos the power themselves to become sons of God, born like him not of
blood nor of the will of flesh, but of God. This may also explain why the
legendary details of the birth of Christ are never mentioned in the Fourth
Gospel. But however clear the view of the evangelist is, it nevertheless
remains obscure how he conceived the process of this incarnation of an
eternal being, transcending time and space and comprehending the whole
world, which lived among them, which, as is said in the Epistle of John,
was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen
with our eyes, that which we have beheld and our hands handled, the Word
of life,(33) etc. If we think ourselves for a moment into this view, into
the unity of the Divine that lives and moves in the Father, in the Logos,
and in all souls that have recognised the Logos, we shall comprehend the
meaning of the statement, that whoever believes in Jesus is born of God,
that whoever has the Son, has the life. To have the truth, to have eternal
life, to have the Son, to have the Father, all this then signifies one and
the same thing for the evangelist, and for the greatest among the
ante-Nicene fathers.
But second, the conception that the Logos was born in Jesus might simply
signify the same as Philo means, when he speaks of the Logos in Abraham
and in the prophets. This would be intelligible from Philo’s point of view
in relation to Abraham, but clearly does not go far enough to explain the
deification of Christ as we find it in all the Evangelists.
There remains possible therefore only a third conception. Philo knows very
well that God has an infinite number of powers or ideas, all of which
might be called Logoi, and together constitute the Logos. If now, among
these Logoi, that of humanity were conceived as highest, and Jesus were
regarded as the incarnate Logos, as the expressed and perfectly realised
idea of man, all would be intelligible. Jesus would then be the ideal man,
the one among mortals who had fully realised the idea of man as it existed
in God, who on the one side was the son of God, on the other side the son
of man, the brother of all men, if they would only acknowledge Christ as
the Son of God, and emulate His example. This would be a correct and to us
a perfectly intelligible and acceptable conception. But many as are the
difficulties which this would remove, the objection remains that we can
produce no historical proof of such a conception of Jesus as Logos of
humanity. We are too poor in historical monuments of the first three
Christian centuries to be able to speak with assurance of the inner
processes of thought of even the most prominent personalities of that
time. In everything, even in relation to many of the leading questions of
the Christian religion, we are obliged to rely on combination and
construction. Not only in the Evangelists, but in many of the church
fathers, feeling overcomes reason, and their expressions admit but too
often of the most varied interpretations, as the later history of the
church has only too clearly proved. Nevertheless we must endeavour to
enter not only into their emotions, but also into their thoughts, and not
believe that they used words without thoughts. I do not say that this is
impossible. Unthinkable as it is, that words arise and exist without
ideas, yet we know only too well that words become mere words, that they
grow pale and die, and that they may finally become _vox et prœterea
nihil_. It is, however, the duty of the historian and especially of the
philologist to call back to life such words as have given up the ghost.
May what I have here written about the meaning of the Logos fulfil this
aim, and at the same time make it clear that my desire for the discovery
of the original text of the _Sermo Verus_ was not an idle one. I have
since learned that the same wish was expressed at an earlier date by no
less a person than Barthold Niebuhr.